Unknown Maker, Dutch

Anne Allen Ives (1810-1884), the mother of the donor of this and several other pieces in these cases, was a remarkably early collector of ceramics in America. (Identifiable by the last line of the label indicating the bequest of Hope Brown Russell, Mrs. Ives daughter). She acquired her first piece around 1820 and continued to collect all through her life. The collection uniquely documents the type of ceramics found in Rhode Island in the colonial period and just after. Mrs. Ives often placed descriptive labels on her pieces stating where they were acquired. In this instance the label reads "Mrs. (Gov) Hopkins/blanc mange mould." Rhode Island's colonial governor and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Stephen Hopkins, lived in a house two blocks north of this Museum. It too is a public museum.

According to the donor's mother, this serving dish in the form of a herring was used as a blanc-mange mold by the widow of Rhode Island Gov. Stephen Hopkins, whose house stands two blocks north of the Museum at the comer of Benefit and Hopkins Street.